


trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat

by TheAndromedaRecord



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Fitz Needs a Hug, Gen, Implied/Referenced James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Loneliness, Non-Canonical Character Death, Not Canon Compliant, Paranormal, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, bucky is their guardian angel, grant ward is a bastard as always, hopefully theres a happy ending, will they de-ghost him? who knows!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-10-28 11:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20777981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAndromedaRecord/pseuds/TheAndromedaRecord
Summary: There's a ghost in the Playground, a lonely spirit that's walking its floors.When James Buchanan Barnes dies, he dies—but not all the way. He's trapped between life and death in the last place he felt safe—an old SSR base. He remembers barely anything; he doesn't even remember his name. But maybe, with time, he can remember how to communicate. How to befriend. How to love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so. this is a dumb idea but im writing it anyway

There was only one man in the base. 

Well, two. But one was dead and didn’t really count. 

The live man was short and squat. He passed his time wandering the halls of the base, communicating with a man with an eyepatch, and simulating war on a strange device far beyond the dead man’s time. 

The live man hadn’t been there nearly as long as the dead man. Five years, maybe. Time wasn’t really meaningful down here. The blinds were barely ever open to let the daylight in. The dead man would have quite liked more light, but the agent who oversaw the windows did not like the light. It interfered with the screens. So the dead man had no way to keep track of time. Things like days had long since become irrelevant. Hours blurred together. 

The dead man didn’t remember his name. It had been 70 years since he was alive. The moment he woke up, floating in the war room, he knew he was dead. But he didn’t know his name. 

When he woke up, there were people there. He had some idea of who he was. He knew who he worked for. But when the war ended, the people trickled out. For a little bit, they used the base, but then it was shut down. He still remembered, crystal clear, Peggy Carter giving the base one last once-over before turning her back on it forever. He tried to run after her, but he collapsed to his knees and retched the moment he tried to step over the threshold. He could only listen as the sound of her car faded away.

He was alone for so long in the dark. His footsteps could not even disturb the dust. He was so terribly weak without people to draw power from. Some days he couldn’t even move. He just floated in the air, not a man so much as a collection of thoughts held together by a despairing soul. 

Then the agent came. He couldn’t hear the dead man. But the ghost cried and fell to his knees in relief as soon as the agent walked through the door. Every word the short man spoke was like water from a holy spring. Finally. The ghost felt vitality rush through his veins as he fed on the man’s warmth. He could move. His footsteps sometimes whispered. He could touch things, even if he couldn’t always feel them.

Still, it was lonely. Achingly lonely. The ghost still remembered when the base had been full and bustling with men in uniform and women in pressed skirts. It seemed now like an empty ribcage. Sometimes, on days when he was especially strong due to circumstances beyond his knowledge or control, he could make the game glitch or knock mugs off tables, but it was pointless. The agent never paid attention.

And then the plane came. 

Supply planes came every once in a while to deliver food and new gun games for the agent to play. But this plane was different. It was huge, and far beyond anything the ghost had ever seen. He knew that technology had advanced while he’d been trapped in the base, but the knowledge didn’t quite hit until that moment as he stared up at the black behemoth. 

More people poured from the plane, a waterfall of agents. So many. So loud. The ghost stepped back as the agent stepped forward to greet them. 

Even though he could only hear the voices as if through deep water, the ghost found it overwhelming. They’d been alone for so long, and now there were agents here. And it didn’t sound like they were leaving. 

The ghost examined the newcomers. Their clothes were strange, like the agent who lived in the base. Modern. 

“Welcome to the Playground,” said the agent.

“It’s nice to meet you,” the ghost said in a voice rendered strange by disuse. They couldn’t hear him, of course. But it was only polite. 

He followed them as they took a tour of the base. He knew every step of the floor—he’d walked it for 70 years—but the tour still taught him things he hadn’t known. These rooms were for holding prisoners. This was to be Fitzsimmons lab—who was Fitzsimmons? How would the new director decorate his office, he wondered. They started to divvy up the rooms, and the ghost felt uneasy. He had always had free reign of the base—well, he still did, the walls didn’t stop him most days, but he felt weird about aimlessly wandering through a room that actually belonged to someone. 

“It’s nice to have people here,” he said. They did not respond or hear. Of course. “I’ve been lonely.”

—-

The new agents settled in quickly. They laughed, they played, they went on missions. They recruited, they decorated. It was all far too fast. The ghost had been static for almost a century, and now SHIELD was moving at a fever pace to fight Hydra. 

The ghost remembered Hydra. He had fought them, he thought. It was one of the only things he remembered about himself—he was reminded of Hydra every time he looked at the eagle on the wall. Maybe he’d worn an eagle like that, or an eagle like the one that cried rampant from the shoulders of every jacket. 

He listened. They talked about SHIELD and the SSR, and he started to remember. Yes, he had been a part of the SSR. He’d fought Hydra. He remembered guns, looking down scopes, grass and trees and blood soaking into dirt. There were facilities, and metal, and the memory of pain streaming in too fast to catalog. He remembered how it felt to fight, but not how it felt outside of fighting to be him. 

He learned the names of the agents. More and more trickled in every day, but he attached himself like a barnacle to the first who arrived on the plane. They were a new beacon of normalcy, a new ocean of things to learn, and he soaked them up like a plant fallen victim to drought. 

There was Skye, a woman with attitude and skill with the strange screened devices. She was slowly learning to fight and to shoot. The ghost liked to sit with her at the shooting range. The gunshots didn’t bother him—he could barely hear them. If he stood between her and the target, sometimes the bullets shot through his body would veer off course just enough to be unusual. He didn’t do that often. He could just barely feel the metal passing through him, and it reminded him of the gut punch he’d felt when he was shot. He hadn’t been killed by bullets, though. At least he didn’t think so.

May was far colder. The ghost had little hope that any of his feeble signs would convince her to look for him. She was far too pragmatic, gazing at the world through a lens made of ice. She taught Skye to fight and shoot with a detachment she strove to maintain. But the ghost watched her when she thought no one was watching, saw the softness around her eyes whenever her gaze followed her protege. 

Fitzsimmons, he learned, was not one person but two. Fitz and Simmons. It hurt him to spend too much time with them; anguish roiled from the tension between them. Fitz stammered, his hand shook, he was frustrated and angry and broken. Simmons looked on in horror and sadness, unable to help him. The ghost didn’t know who Fitz was before the injury they spoke of, but he supposed the engineer—former engineer, perhaps?—was nice enough. But his ability to sense emotions made it hard to spend time with them, especially because there was nothing he could do to help. He liked to spend time in the lab, though. The things they created and used were beyond his wildest dreams of the future, and he craved those brief demonstrations of their amazing power. The technicians of the laboratory shivered as he peered over their shoulders, and they complained of the cold. But they never considered it was a dead man. 

Coulson was the director, but he was more of an anchor. He was always steady and calm, like a rock in a stormy sea. He decorated his office with old things, and the ghost liked to add himself to the decoration. He fit right in. It was his favorite place in the base, and it was there that he found out another way to let them know where he was: if the needle was already poised to play the record, he could nudge it into place. The room was a welcome comfort now that Coulson was starting to remodel a little. The ghost didn’t mind; he’d become sick of the base as-is. But it was still nice to have a place full of the familiar. 

Triplett, though, the ghost knew. He came with a briefcase full of old-fashioned spyware that the ghost remembered using. He remembered the shape of the ring and the cigarette, how they fit in his hands. And the man’s face was familiar, like an echo of something long-lost. 

He swatted a deck of playing cards off a dresser, and Triplett murmured, “what the hell?” but didn’t assign any more importance to the incident. 

Triplett was friendly and charismatic, and his name seemed already to fit on the ghost’s tongue. 

That was all of the team that arrived on the plane. But there was one more. He learned quickly what the man had done: a traitor, a Hydra agent, a member of the organization that had killed him. 

He was in Vault D. D for doghouse. Sealed away behind a wall of energy that the ghost still hadn’t figured out but had no trouble walking through. It was one of the bad days, the slip-away days, the days when he couldn’t touch anything and he could barely feel the floor. His hands were nothing but a suggestion. 

The man didn’t notice him. No one did. 

“Do you know the things your Nazi squad has done?” the ghost hissed. 

The man didn’t reply, of course.

“You fucking Hydra asshole!” the ghost yelled, screamed, his fists clenched so tight he would have drawn blood if he still had blood. Hydra had killed him. Hydra had trapped him in this limbo. Hydra had hurt the closest thing he had to friends—they were so, so far from his friends, but he’d been lonely for decades. 

He rushed at the man and swung with a vicious haymaker, but his fist only passed through. Instead of shattering cartilage, he only managed to raise goosebumps on Ward’s neck. 

“I’m going to kill you,” the ghost vowed, even though he knew it was an impotent threat. “You and all your people.” 

Ward stood up, and the ghost gasped. Could Ward see him?

No, Ward walked straight through him—it was wholly unpleasant, like being dunked in a swamp—and inspected the opaque wall of force. 

“I know you’re watching,” he said, his voice clipped. “Coulson. You won’t make me talk.” 

The ghost stepped through the wall. There was no one watching.

“Damn idiot,” the ghost said, walking away.

He’d started to pick up how they talked. He picked up plenty of languages; he understood when May spoke in French and Russian and German. Those were the three languages he learned, plus English. But there was another one. Another one that nobody spoke anymore. 

The ghost was there for their movie night. He was fascinated by the movie, called “The Matrix.” They’d come so far since he saw “Snow White” in theaters on leave—

The memory vanished as soon as he grabbed hold of it. 

He sat in between Skye and Triplett and tried his hardest to pretend that he was really there. That they could see him and simply were choosing not to look at him right now. He could barely follow the movie, so busy he was being absolutely fascinated at the photorealistic effects. 

At one point, his hand brushed Skye’s, and hers twitched. 

He finally became bold and reached for the popcorn, but it all slipped from his grass. When he pulled his hand back, he knocked a glass. It teetered slightly. No one noticed. 

No one would notice. No one would notice anything. But it was still so much better than being alone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team preps for a mission to recover the Obelisk. Someone in the base has vital information on the Obelisk re: touching it and why you shouldn't do it. But no one listens to him.

They moved far too fast for his bad days.

Those were the days when he wandered in a haze and didn’t know how many weeks had passed until he pulled the wisps of his spirit back together. The haze had no memories, no thoughts, just perception of grim shapes through a cloud of fog. Sometimes sounds echoed through the mist. 

When he pulled himself back together, it took a while to get his bearings, and something was always different even if he didn’t know what.

One day, he pulled himself back together and Simmons was gone. He thought she had just left for a little while, but one look at Fitz told him that she was gone for the foreseeable future. There was an awkwardness in the air; no one would say where she had gone. 

But a shadow floated over Fitz’s shoulder. A shadow that Fitz talked to when no one else was listening—well, when he thought no one else was listening. Simmons was the only ghost he could see. 

“Fitz,” the ghost said, “she’s not real.”

Fitz wouldn’t hear him, of course, but the ghost was finding it liberating to talk. To put ideas out into the world and pretend they held some sort of meaningful echo. Talking was how he pulled himself out of the bad days, because if he could hear himself that meant he was real.

Fitz reached for his shoulder, where the ghost could see Simmon’s spectral hand. Simmons wasn’t a real ghost, but the real ghost was learning to see the traces of the emotions of those he watched. Fitz believed so hard that Simmons was really there, he could almost make her tangible. At least to the ghost. No one else could see Simmons.

“You gotta get over that dame.” The ghost placed his hand on Fitz’s shoulder, right where Simmons’ hand was. “I got no idea why she left, but it seems real cold, running out with you like this. Someone who really cares about you’ll stay with you through anything.”

Fitz didn’t listen, just reverently clasped Simmons’ hand. The ghost was still pulling himself back together, so Fitz’s hand passed through the ghost like a rock through water. 

Still, Fitz’s hand was warm. Not the warmth of skin in life—the ghost didn’t even remember what that felt like—but the warmth of a fire from five paces away. It was a warmth that had gone lacking for 70 years, a warmth the ghost flocked to like a moth to a flame, yet one that burned him from sheer overstimulation if he was exposed too long. 

“You’re a fine friend, Fitz,” said the ghost. 

Someone from the entrance of the lab said something; the ghost wasn’t paying attention, so he couldn’t make out the details. But Fitz turned, so the ghost did too.

A man stood in the doorway with his muscle-bound arms crossed. The ghost hadn’t seen him before.

“You’re, ah,” Fitz snapped his fingers, “right. Uh, the new guy.”  
“Mack,” the man offered. He was tall, broad, strong, and black. There weren’t any black soldiers when the ghost woke up. He wondered how much the outside world had changed. “You’re Fitz, right? The Director says you’re a genius. I’m a mechanic, so we’ll be working together.”

“Um. Y-yeah. Well, I…” Fitz’s hands twitched.

“You can do this,” the ghost advised. 

Fitz shook his head. “Nice to meet you, Mack.”

Mack smiled and walked away, unfazed by Fitz’s odd demeanor. The ghost followed him, intrigued. Mack was breaking up the routine, but in a very respectful way, it seemed. It was a relief to see someone who didn’t treat Fitz like something stamped “Fragile,” but that may change. 

Mack started to unpack his tools in the garage. The ghost reached for a wrench and tried to swat it off the tool cabinet, to no avail. Even the bit of warmth he’d drawn from Fitz wasn’t enough to make him solid enough to move anything.

“You can’t see me, can you?” the ghost asked. You never knew when a psychic was going to walk through the door.

Mack wasn’t a psychic. He didn’t respond.

“Well, I suppose you’re not so bad.” 

The ghost hoisted himself up on the counter. It gave him a bit of comfort that he actually had to try to lift his weight; on intangible days, he could just float straight up. 

“Fitz is a good guy,” the ghost continued. “Everyone here is good. Having people here is good.” 

Mack took a toolkit and put it on a top shelf behind the counter, passing right through the ghost’s torso in the process. The ghost gasped and slid out of the way. His chest burned. 

“Drafty in here,” Mack muttered. 

“Warn a guy next time, okay?” the ghost wheezed. “Damn.”

He stood up and shook himself to cope with the strange warmth. He’d been gone for a bit. Last he checked, the agents were still chasing leads on an elusive artifact they were trying to locate. Maybe by now they at least knew what they were looking for. 

The ghost didn’t actually walk to Coulson’s office. He slipped there, a thing that happened sometimes when he was a bit intangible; he wasn’t sure if he was teleporting or just went into a fugue state, but one moment he was in the garage and then he was in Coulson’s office, listening to some soothing jazz. Coulson had hung a new Captain America poster on the wall. The ghost was fairly sure he had met Captain America while he was alive. That made sense; they’d fought in the same war, as far as he could tell. The memory, thought, was totally irretrievable, and his head hurt and his body grew transparent every time he tried to retrieve it. Once, his left arm totally disappeared until he stopped thinking about the man in red, white, and blue. 

Coulson was leafing through some scant files titled The Obelisk. The ghost peered over Coulson’s shoulder and scanned the data on the screens. They had pinned down a man selling data about the Obelisk, and they had recruited some former SHIELD mercs to retrieve it.

The op was soon. He’d been in the fog longer than he’d originally thought.

“That looks familiar,” the ghost said. “I think I’ve heard of this before.”

Coulson sighed and wrote down some final plans. His handwriting, usually neat, was almost unreadable. He hadn’t slept in a bit. The ghost could feel his fatigue. 

Which was a shame; the Obelisk was important, the ghost thought. Coulson needed to be on his game.

“Sir,” the ghost said tentatively, “would you like me to help?”

The ghost had decided that, since he lived on the base and fought Hydra, he was a SHIELD agent, and that meant Coulson was his director. The ghost didn’t like to think about the fact that he couldn’t actually help SHIELD. He was the most useless agent on the base. But at least he didn’t require a salary. After all, no one ever asked him to do anything.

“This looks dangerous,” the ghost observed. He ran his hands over the papers, and even managed to shift one a little. Coulson didn’t notice. “Are you sending Skye in? I’ve been watching her. I think she’s ready. She started with a sniper rifle recently, you know. Nearly sprained her shoulder—well, she’s small, I’m sure she’ll get used to it.”

His first time with a sniper rifle had been similar. His shoulder hurt. His left one. He stopped thinking about it in case his arm disappeared again.

“I wish I could come with you,” he continued. “I’d love a chance to leave this base.”

He sat down, stared at the poster. It was new. New was good. New was an anchor when the terrifying tide of his bricked hell threatened to wash him away.

“I hope you guys don’t leave.”

“All right,” Coulson said decisively. The ghost didn’t get his hopes up. Coulson talked to himself when he made decisions. “Time to call in the team.”

Sure enough, Skye was on the team. But only if it went south. Coulson explained as such in the briefing, and then they were gone. 

Missions moved too fast. The ghost had gone on missions, but he couldn’t tell if his missions had been slower or if being dead was messing with his perception of time. 

“Please be careful,” the ghost told them, walking with them to the Bus. “I don’t know what I’d do if any of you died.”

Well, that wasn’t true. He knew what he’d do: nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because he could do nothing. The world would remain unaffected no matter what he did. The others had each other; his grief would be silent, impotent. 

He accidentally walked straight through Skye, raising gooseflesh on her arm.

“Sorry,” the ghost said. It was only polite. 

After the team left, the ghost wandered the base. He found himself in the basement. 

He found himself in the basement a lot. It held some old bedrooms that had recently been remodeled into storage compartments. Maybe he’d slept in one of the bedrooms once. He didn’t remember. 

He wafted through the door—it took a bit of effort, but no wall had ever proved impassable—and ran his hands over the exposed pipes and locked crates. The wall hadn’t been repainted. It was stained.

“Why am I here?” he whispered. There were many things that he meant when he said that. 

He meant to only stay there for a few hours until the agent came back, but by the time he emerged it had been three days and the team was in a briefing preparing to infiltrate a military base. 

“The goal,” said Coulson, “is to find this.”

The screen displayed an image, and the ghost’s breath would have left him if he had any. 

He knew that image. The Obelisk. 

“Reinhardt,” the ghost breathed. Who the hell was Reinhardt? His left arm hurt.

“That’s dangerous,” the ghost recalled. Yes, he remembered now: they’d tried to find this thing, but legends followed in its wake. Anyone who touched it died. He whirled to Coulson.

“Sir,” he said. “Sir, you’re making a mistake. Let the military have it. It’s dangerous. There’s a reason Peggy sealed it away. Don’t let your team touch it.”

“Take it out of the box,” Coulson said. “We might need to sneak it out.”

“No!” the ghost yelled. “You aren’t listening! You can’t touch it!”

“Any questions?” Coulson asked. They started asking some questions. The ghost didn’t listen. 

“Sir! You have to listen to me! Please, hear me!”

One of his team would die. 

“Goddammit!” the ghost screamed, driving his fist through the screen. The whole display flickered and glitched. Coulson frowned and pressed a few buttons until the image returned. 

“You’re going to get your dumb asses killed!”

The ghost, in one sweeping, angry motion, threw all of the stacked papers off the desk, sending them careening across the floor. 

Everyone looked at the mess, startled.

“I’ve been telling you,” Hunter said, “you’ve got to get your aircon checked, man. Everyone’s getting chilly.”

“This place has been around since the 40s,” Skye replied. “Of course it’s a bit drafty.”

“Or maybe there’s a fucking ghost!” cried the ghost. “Please listen to me!”

The team started to head for the bus.

“Hey!” The ghost grabbed Skye’s arm. “Hey, don’t touch it! Don’t touch it!”

They didn’t listen, of course. They never listened. The ghost imagined May’s face turning grey and cracked, Skye’s body turning to dust. 

Skye was warm and the ghost leaned into it, trying to freeze her into paying attention. He took all the warmth from the bodies of the agents, feeling it solidify his body. Maybe, just maybe, they would hear three vital words.

“Don’t! Touch! It!”

Skye turned over her shoulder. 

“Did you say something, Idaho?”

More was said, surely, but the ghost didn’t hear it. The effort had ruined him, and he was falling, falling through the fog, slipping away into a dream of his own creation. He couldn’t feel his fingers. His left arm was gone. Eventually, he forgot what it meant to have an arm.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ghost wanders the base, trying to fix problems. He cannot fix any problems. Because he's a ghost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was written as part of today's whumptober prompt: shaky hands

Hartley, Idaho, and Hunter didn’t come back from the mission. 

That was the one fact he registered. He didn’t know who they were or who the mission was, except that there was a mission and Hartley, Idaho, and Hunter didn’t come back from it. Whatever that meant.

He went to the lab. He went to the lab when he was unsettled, because the lab always reminded him.

After a few days in the lab, he remembered. But everyone was complaining about the draft in the lab. That was the ghost’s fault, of course; he pulled himself together by draining warmth from people. Not enough to hurt, of course.

Fitz volunteered to fix the air conditioning. Or, at least, he started the project and didn’t tell anyone. Fitz only ever talked to ghosts.

The ghost decided it was only fair that he help Fitz, considering it was the ghost’s fault. The AC wasn’t even broken, so Fitz wouldn’t have much to do.

Which was how the ghost found himself in the basement, watching Fitz examine some control panel.

Fitz dropped the wrench again, swearing vehemently. He was clearly losing patience with his tool.

“Stupid bloody wrench,” he muttered. “Stupid bloody hands.”

The ghost tasted the tang of Fitz’s frustration. Fitz sighed deeply and picked up the wrench again. It was a bad day; even his good day was trembling so hard his wrench could barely latch on to a bolt. 

“I just have to check this,” he whispered. An invisible someone—a nonexistent someone—said something, and he turned over his shoulder, exasperated. “No, Simmons, no one else is gonna do it. Besides, if I can’t fix a simple aircon, I shouldn’t even be here.”

The ghost groaned and leaned against the wall while Fitz kept attempting to pry off the vent cover. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the AC, but there was no way to tell Fitz that. He’d tried. 

Fitz finally loosened the final bolt and threw the cover aside. He began tinkering with the dusty and incomprehensible devices that governed the temperature of the base. At one point, the ghost had understood every system, but Coulson had updated so many things, and the ghost couldn’t keep up with modern technology. 

“I’ve already ruled out the…the…the vents,” Fitz breathed. “Only option left is that this thing’s gone belly-up.”

He reached in for a wire. The ghost tasted a sudden nip of blood.

“MotherFUCKER!” Fitz yelled, yanking back his hand. 

The ghost peered closer and saw that Fitz’s trembling figure had a nasty cut. 

“It’s useless,” Fitz muttered. He slid to the floor and sucked ruefully on his bleeding finger, which now tasted more of melancholy than iron. “Simmons, I should just leave. There’s nothing I can do here.”  
The ghost sat down beside him. 

“Hey, man,” he objected, “that’s not true. You’re just having a bad day. Everyone’s got those.”

Fitz picked up a pair of pliers and chucked it at the wall. It bounced off with a clang. 

The ghost reached for Fitz’s hand, then thought better of it. The icy touch would be another reminder of the “broken aircon.” Come to think of it, the ghost’s very presence was a monument to his friend’s imagined failure.

He stood up and left the room, as much as it pained him to leave someone hurting behind. As soon as he crossed the threshold with his back turned to Fitz, a memory punched him in the gut. 

There was a young man lying in a small, threadbare bed. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks hollow, his skin hot and clammy with fever. He reached for a glass of water, but his hands shook so hard he knocked the glass off the milk-crate nightstand—

The ghost fell to his knees, screaming and clutching his arm. Pain was so rare in this limbo, but when it came it was a lightning bolt. He gasped and pushed the memory from his mind. Forget, forget, forget. The ghost lay down, trembling. His left arm was gone. It probably wouldn’t come back for some time; the memory had been so clear.

The door behind him opened, and Fitz peered out.

“Who’s there,” he called tremulously.

The ghost’s heart jumped. He tried to reply, but could only wheeze in pain. When he tried to stand up, his legs trembled too violently to support his nonexistent weight. It was like having a body again.

“Just hearing things,” Fitz murmured. “C’mon, Fitz, pull yourself together.”

The ghost screwed his eyes shut and curled into a ball, trying to ground himself. Breathing techniques didn’t exactly work for him anymore.

He couldn’t tell how long it took to regain his composure. When he opened his eyes and stood up, his left arm was gone. But he was getting better at not totally evaporating. That was something.

Fitz walked straight through the ghost on his way back to the lab. The ghost gasped, and Fitz shivered.

“Stupid, stupid aircon,” Fitz sighed. “Can’t even fix a bloody aircon.”

The ghost felt anguish and couldn’t tell if it belonged to Fitz or himself. He decided to go find Skye. Skye was always relatively emotionally stable.

Of course, when he found Skye, she was on her way to the lab. But her presence was calming, so he walked with her.

“Hey, Fitz.”

Fitz barely looked up as Skye and the ghost entered the lab.

“I haven’t fixed the aircon yet. I’ll get to it,” Fitz responded tiredly.

“That’s not—I don’t care about the AC.”

“Neither do I,” the ghost added. “Well, I don’t feel temperature like you guys.”

“Oh. Well, then, why are you here?”  
“Just wanted to check in. How are you doing?” Skye’s hands fidgeted.

“Fine,” Fitz replied brusquely. 

He was still mulling over the AC, trying to find out what he’d missed. The ghost could tell from the cold that floated around him. Skye chewed on her lip, and the ghost could hear the words she held back. Fitz noticed her hesitation.

“What?” he snapped. “What is it?”

“I-I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. With the whole cloaking thing.”

The ghost cringed at the spice of Fitz’s anger.

“I’m fine with it. Why wouldn’t I be fine with it? I told you, I’m glad you got it.”

The ghost watched Fitz’s shaking hands curl into fists under the table. Fitz only told the truth about his feelings to Simmons when he thought no one was listening. The ghost was sometimes listening.

“Well, good!” Skye said. “That’s good, because Coulson wants you to install it in the Bus.”

Fitz flashed a thin-lipped smile.

“Right. I can do that.” Fitz thought it was a lie. The ghost was good at telling when people were lying.

Skye walked out of the lab, leaned against the wall, and took a deep, shuddering breath.

“When was the last time you two actually talked?” the ghost asked her. “Without you asking him to do something, I mean.”

Skye didn’t listen. She just walked away. The ghost crossed his arms. He had useful things to say, but no one ever listened to him.

It was nightfall, which meant Coulson would be playing some records. Coulson had impeccable taste in music. Usually, the ghost just sat outside and listened, but tonight he felt like getting closer.

“Hey,” the ghost said, wafting through the wall. “What’ve you got playing to—Sir, what the hell?”

This was in reference to the activity Coulson was involved in; namely, carving a bunch of symbols into the wall.

“Those are the symbols on the Obelisk. And the ones that crazy guy Garrett carved. Right?”

Coulson didn’t respond. He was utterly fixated on the wall before him. The ghost approached and inspected Coulson’s work. 

“A knife, huh. You know, you could just use a, uh, what’s that thing? The new chalkboard, with the markers. You don’t have to ruin the paint.”

The ghost sighed and flopped onto Coulson’s desk.

“Sir, you realize how worrying this is.”

He glanced over at Coulson’s face. It was drawn, disturbed, as if the man was being compelled to write. He probably was; that’s what he’d heard about Garrett. 

“How long have you been doing this?”

The knife scraped against the wall. Coulson’s emotions were subdued even more than normal. He felt like a sleeping man. As if he was in a trance. 

“Hey.”

The ghost tried to crumple up a piece of paper to throw at Coulson, but his fingers just slid off of it. He growled in frustration.

“Your lives would be so much easier if you just listened to me.”

The words felt familiar on his tongue, and he felt another memory rearing its ugly head from the dark recesses of whatever passed for his mind. He repressed it. He was done dealing with memories for today.

“So, Fitz is frustrated with the AC, you’re going crazy….great. Wonderful. Glad to be working here, sir.”

Technically, he didn’t work there. But he was stuck in the building with this agency, so he may as well count himself an employee.

The ghost didn’t understand the odd writing or why Coulson was doing it. No one had bothered explaining it to him, and even if they had, he was no expert at codebreaking or linguistics or whatever. His expertise had always been combat, but he was no use at that now.

“And Fitz thinks he’s useless,” the ghost snorted. “Goddamn, I hate this. Watching you guys struggle and not being able to do anything. Sir, this sucks and I wish you guys could help me.”

Whining was no use, the ghost knew. He got up off the desk and walked over to the carving, trying to make sense of it. He circled Coulson like a shark, walking right through the knife in a failed attempt to deviate its course.

“You should let someone know about this. Someone who isn’t me. Maybe May; you guys seem to like each other.” He patted Coulson on the back. “Maybe a bit more than friends, eh?”

This sort of joking around about romance was considered unprofessional, but no one could hear the ghost, so he figured there was no harm in it. The upshot of that was that nothing he said mattered. The ghost tried not to think about that so he didn’t become more unhinged than he already was.

“You guys would miss me, right?” the ghost asked. “If I suddenly left whatever hell this is. You guys would notice, I think. Who’d make you randomly cold?”

The ghost kept up a running commentary as Coulson worked. He didn’t finish until the sun started to peek in through the blinds. The ghost felt the tingle of Coulson’s exhaustion on his fingertips. Coulson’s work covered the entire wall. 

“Still doesn’t make any sense,” Coulson whispered to what he thought was thin air. He sighed and tossed the knife back into his desk drawer. 

The ghost still had no idea what the pattern meant. Perhaps that was a good thing; it would be agony to understand it and be unable to communicate that information. 

“Well,” the ghost declared, “eh, I’m sure you all will figure it out. You always figure something out.”

The agents were smart and synchronized. They worked together well. They figured out problems. The ghost had a team like that once, he thought. It would make sense, at least. 

The agents were his team now. Even if they didn’t know it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skye falls ill and, in her fever, spills some hidden secrets. The ghost discovers some new powers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys if you're a ward stan you're not gonna like this fic because i fucking hate the man. just a matter of personal taste.
> 
> comments are always appreciated, but i would really prefer it if you put in some nice things along with any fandom wank you wanna put in there

Skye woke up with the flu. 

She didn’t know it yet, but the ghost had learned to pick up on these things. Sickness lurked in her bones. So far she was only a little congested, but the other symptoms were sure to follow. She already had a mild headache. 

“You should really stay in bed,” the ghost advised as soon as Skye walked into the workout room. 

Skye blew her nose, sniffled, and started wrapping her hands. 

“Seriously. Skye. You’re sick. You shouldn’t be overexerting yourself.”

He had taken care of someone sick before, he remembered. Someone he cared about very much. He cared about Skye very much too, though, so the memories blurred together, the details impossible to differentiate. 

Skye got to work on the punching bag, but without her usual vigor. Her punches were halfhearted but she quickly worked up a sweat. Her watch beeped. The ghost could hear the quick, thumping rhythm of her heartbeat. 

Skye checked her watch and frowned. 

“160 BPM,” she muttered. “That can’t be right.” 

She put a hand to her forehead. 

“A bit warm in here.”

“It’s not warm in here. You have a fever. Or, wait, maybe is is warm in here. I don’t really know.” 

Skye sighed, wiped away her sweat, and started doing push-ups. The ghost sat cross-legged on the floor next to her. He bit his lip and focused, and started lifting on the ground. It took some concentration, but he was soon floating about two feet in the air. It was a neat trick that it had taken him a few weeks to master. Not of much use, but it felt pretty cool. He’d never actually know if it looked cool.

Being able to float and walk through walls was something straight out of a science fiction novel. He’d read science fiction novels, but couldn’t actually remember the titles or plots of any of them. 

After 30 push-ups, Skye groaned and flopped onto her back, panting. She was angry, the ghost felt. Probably at herself. She was usually so much stronger. 

“Hey, it’s not your fault. You’re sick. You can’t push yourself when you’re sick.”

Skye stood up and blinked woozily. 

“I just need breakfast,” she muttered.

“Nope. You need bed rest.”

The ghost had sat in on Fitz explaining the icers to Mack. Apparently they could cause delayed immune system weakness due to latent dendrotoxin. 

“Yeah, I think you got some sorta sickness. Hunter musta weakened your immune system when he iced you.” 

He followed Skye to the kitchen, where she blearily made herself a bagel. May was already there, eating sausage and eggs. 

“You’re done early,” May remarked drily.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m getting back to drills after this. Just felt a little woozy, figured I needed some food.” 

May fixed Skye with a piercing gaze. “You feeling all right?”

“What? Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just a bit hungry, is all.”

“No,” the ghost said, “you’re not fine. Even if you feel all right, you won’t soon. Take a break.”

“Take care of yourself,” May told Skye. “Better to skip 15 minutes of training than get sick and be out for days.”

“See? She gets this. Listen to your SO, Skye.”

“I told you, I’m fine.” 

Skye took a big bite out of her bagel, smiled, and immediately vomited in the nearest trashcan. May raised an eyebrow. The ghost crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow in a calculated imitation of normal human behavior.

“Okay,” Skye muttered, “I think I’m gonna lie down for a bit.”

“Get Washburn to check you out,” May instructed. “Your immune system is probably weakened by that icer.”

“I told you,” the ghost said. “I told you. But you didn’t listen.”

Skye stumbled into the lab, where the new and nervous SHIELD physician Washburn informed her that she had the flu, just as the ghost suspected. 

“You need to rest, ma’am,” Washburn informed her. “For at least three days.”

Skye groaned overdramatically.

“We’re dealing with so much shit right now! I can’t be sick, my team’s counting on me.”

Washburn smiled sympathetically. “I understand, ma’am. But if you push yourself now, you could lose energy or even pass out at a vital point. It’s three days now to avoid being out of commission for three weeks.”

“Okay,” Skye sighed. 

Washburn gave her a caddy of pills with a sheet of instructions. Fitz walked in, absentmindedly rifling through a sheet of papers. 

“Hey, Fitz,” Skye greeted him. 

“Skye. You don’t look so good.”

“That obvious?”

“Flu?”

“How the hell did you—“

“It’s that obvious.” He gave her a thin smile. “I’ll let Coulson know, I’m dropping by his office anyway.”

Skye’s entire body melted in relief. Despite her assertions to the contrary, she was exhausted. She wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but emotions couldn’t be kept from the ghost. 

“I’ll walk you back to your room first,” Fitz told her. “Don’t want you passing out.”

“Yeah,” she muttered. “Probably a good idea.”

Skye was taken care of. The ghost hadn’t really help. His uselessness didn’t sit well with him—he was supposed to take care of his sick friends. But there was nothing he could do now. 

“Well, I guess you’re taken care of,” the ghost sighed. “I’m going to go…do something else…”

The ghost wandered through the hallways, searching for something interesting. It was just the usual. Agents analyzing, training, making beds. It wasn’t the missions and the shootouts that made the base his home; it was these moments. Jokes shared in quick meetings, posters put up on the walls in cheeky violation of protocol, lazy low-key sparring matches between laughing friends. It made him almost feel like he could breathe again. 

He checked in on Skye about an hour later. She wasn’t looking good; she shivered despite her layers of blankets and her eyes were unfocused.

“Hey,” the ghost said, rushing to her side. “Did you take your medicine?”

Skye groaned weakly. The ghost looked around and saw a book lying abandoned on the floor and her work tablet discarded on the covers.

“You were trying to work, you punk. I know that thing wasn’t for Netted Flicks or whatever you guys use for entertainment. Still can’t believe you can just—watch a movie. You know, back in my day, you had to go to a theatre.”

He lay a hand on her head. She was burning up. 

“Skye,” he said softly. “I know you can’t hear me, but hang in there, OK?”

Fitz opened the door and walked in with a water bottle of fruit juice. The ghost dodged out of the way as Fitz knelt at Skye’s bedside.

“I brought you some, ah, some, some stuff for you to drink. To help you feel better.”

“I dunno…I don’t want it…too cold…can you heat it up?”

“I am not heating up mango juice. That’s a crime against God and man.”

Skye’s hands were shaking very hard. Unfortunately, so were Fitz’s, so it took a bit of creative gerrymandering to get her to drink the bottle. 

“Wish I could help,” the ghost mourned. “I’ve got very steady hands.”

“Fitz,” Skye breathed, “am I gonna die?”

Fitz took a thermometer to her forehead, which the ghost did not understand, and looked at the reading.”

“104. Yup. I’m taking you to the infirmary. Come on.”

Skye made absolutely no motion to get out of bed.

“Skye. Work with me. I’m not Mack, I can’t get you there myself.”

“Cuz you’re a twink,” Skye giggled. “Fitz is a twink.”

“I am not!”

“Twink,” Skye sang.

“Is someone going to explain to me what a twink is?” the ghost asked. “Right. Of course not. You guys never explain your slang to me.”

Fitz left with a sigh and came back with Mack, who effortlessly lifted Skye into his arms.

“Any way I can help?” the ghost asked. 

He reached into Skye’s head and felt the heat there. He could draw it out, but decided against it. Fevers killed germs, apparently. There was one thing he could do, and he shouldn’t even do it. 

“I wish I could help you,” he told Skye mournfully.

There was someone he had taken care of, someone who had depended on him. Whoever it was was probably dead now. These were his new charges. 

Skye’s face fell, turning worried as they lay her in an infirmary bed.

“Why did it happen,” she whispered to Fitz. “I don’t—I don’t believe it. I don’t believe he would do that.” 

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Fitz soothed her.

“My fault,” she whispered, “it must have been my fault. Every family I join, it all goes wrong.”

“What that jackass in the basement did wasn’t your fault, Skye,” Mack reassured her. 

“You’ll leave,” she said with certainty. “It won’t be your fault. It, it won’t be your fault, I promise, I’m just…some people aren’t meant to have a family.”

Fitz wrapped Skye in a hug. 

“I’m not leaving,” he promised. The ghost saw tears form in the corners of his eyes. “I love you, Skye, you’re like a sister to me.”

Mack knelt behind Skye’s bed. She was crying now, her face wet with tears and cold, feverish sweat. 

“Skye,” Mack said, “I know I haven’t known you for that long, and you probably won’t remember any of this once you’re all better, but…I know you, and I know your team, and they care about you so much. I’m here for you, okay?”

It was agony to stay with Skye and feel her pain and delirium, knowing there was no way he could actually help. The ghost could say nothing that she would hear. So he decided to do something that would be distracting but also make him feel not great but would also be cathartic: go and visit that jackass in the basement. 

“Hey, Ward,” the ghost greeted, phasing through the wall. “Betrayed any friends lately?”

Ward kept doing push-ups.

“I’m onto your fucking game, Ward.”

Still more push-ups. 

“You’re refusing to speak to anyone but Skye, huh? You know, if you really gave a shit about redeeming yourself, you’d talk to anyone, not just the person that’s most susceptible to your manipulation.” 

The ghost went intangible and positioned himself in Ward’s space, drawing away all the energy he could. 

“Fitz still hasn’t recovered, thanks for asking. Congratulations on tearing the team apart, you bastard. You had a choice and you chose wrong.” 

Ward started to shiver.

“If it weren’t for the information you got, I’d be trying very, very hard to kill you for what you did to my friends.”

He drew the warmth into himself, ignoring the stab of distaste in his gut at what Ward had done. He had so many choices along the way. So many chances to help. Even now, he was refusing to give up anything unless it got him something.

“I would give anything to be in your position,” the ghost hissed. “To be able to talk to them. To be able to help them. Even if it meant I was locked up forever. And you’re wasting it trying to manipulate the woman you betrayed. I heard what happened, you know. You’re only alive because she’s a fucking good person, and you’re trying to take advantage of that?”

Ward stood up and paced quickly, rubbing his arms. His breath wasn’t fogging and the climate control of the room hadn’t changed, but he was freezing.

“You don’t love her,” the ghost said. There was a lump in his throat, a lump that would signify tears if he could produce them reliably anymore. “If you loved her, if you loved any of them, you wouldn’t…you wouldn’t…”

The ghost collapsed to his knees, shaking. He remembered now. He remembered what it was to love, the surging tenderness deep in his stomach, the fierce protectiveness that coursed through his veins. Love was selfless. Love was the motive behind doing things with no benefit to oneself. Whatever motivated Ward, it wasn’t love. The team deserved better. They deserved so much better than giving up portions of their hearts to an uncaring man.

“She blames herself. She always blames herself. She hasn’t forgiven herself. It’s your fault, and that’s not something you’re even trying to fix.”

There was someone the ghost loved, someone he loved deeply and without pause. He remembered how it felt, even though his mind was no clearer. The memory of love was not linked to his memory of events. To remember how to love was like remembering what breathing felt like, or remembering how to walk. It was just a thing he did. A thing decent people did.

“What happened to you?” the ghost whispered to Ward, who was wrapping himself in his blanket. “How did you forget?”

“Coulson!” Ward yelled at the camera. “I know you’re doing that!”

“So you plead to him now?” 

Ward started doing jumping jacks to try to stay warm. The storm of heat and rage in the ghost kept swirling and sucking.

“Fitz has trouble helping his sick friend because of his hands. Skye. She’s broken because of you, thinks it’s her fault. The woman you claim to love. Not that you care. You never care about her except when she has something to offer you.”

The ghost stretched his hands out. He was dangerous. He had killed people. There was blood on his hands, and he didn’t even blink at it, because the people he killed were Nazis.

Ward was a Nazi.

“I should kill you,” the ghost breathed. 

Ward’s teeth chattered. The ghost’s chest burned with hate. How long until Ward broke out? How long until Ward hurt Skye or Fitz even more? He was a time bomb kept in the basement, a danger to everyone the ghost loved.

The ghost gasped and dropped his arms. No. Ward was useful. He couldn’t kill Ward. He was dead. It wasn’t his right to kill a prisoner, and it was wrong. Plain wrong, even if Ward was a Nazi. Plus, it would upset his friends. Even if they shouldn’t be upset, it wasn’t his call to make. It wasn’t his right to control where the chips of their hearts fell.

“I’m not you, Ward,” the ghost whispered. 

“Thank you for turning the heat back on,” Ward said to the camera. “Is this how you treat all your prisoners?”

The ghost had hurt Ward. He’d made him cold. He could affect the world. Well, not in a positive or useful way, but it was a start. 

“An apology would be nice!” Ward yelled sarcastically.

“Oh, I’m not doing that, you bastard. I don’t regret making you shiver a bit, and I’ll probably do it again. Good way to let off steam, ‘specially cuz you’re a Nazi.”

The ghost sighed and sat down. 

“We’re quite the pair, ain’t we? An agent who can help but doesn’t want to and an agent who desperately wants to help but can’t. A new man of an old agency and an old man of a new agency. A Nazi and an American soldier. Both of us imprisoned.”

Ward returned to his push-ups.

“God, I feel disgusting having anything in common with you,” the ghost continued.

Ward kept doing push-ups, unheeding of the ghosts’s words. Of course. No one could hear him.

“If your situation ever changes and it would be right to kill you,” the ghost said, “I will. No hesitation. And I will enjoy it. Because Fitz is my friend. Skye is my friend. They are all my friends.”

He left Ward behind. He wished his team could do the same.


End file.
